Critically evaluate Homer's Iliad as a primary epic - CU English Honours Notes

Iliad as a primary epic

An epic has been generally described as a long narrative poem, on a grand scale, about the deeds of warriors and heroes, kings and Gods. It is majestic both in theme and style. It is a polygonal heroic story incorporating myth, legend, folktale, religion, and historical events of national or universal significance, involving action of broad sweep and grandeur. Epics are mostly of national significance in the sense that they embody the history and aspirations of a nation in a lofty or grandiose manner. An epic is a cultural mirror with a fixed ideological stance, often reflecting the best and the noblest principles of a nation’s ethos.

“The Iliad” is an epic poem by the ancient Greek poet Homer, which recounts some of the significant events of the final weeks of the Trojan War and the Greek siege of the city of Troy. Written in the mid-8th Century BC, “The Iliad” is usually considered to be the earliest work in the whole Western literary tradition, and one of the best known and loved stories of all time. Through its portrayal of the epic subject matter of the Trojan War, the stirring scenes of bloody battle, the wrath of Achilles and the constant interventions of the gods, it explores themes of glory, wrath, homecoming and fate, and has provided subjects and stories for many other later Greek, Roman and Renaissance writings.

Epic poetry falls into two distinct categories: primary and secondary epic. The Iliad belongs to the former. A primary epic begins in medias res. In Medias Res is Latin for "it begins in the middle of things" and then has flashbacks to explain action leading up to that point. In The Iliad, for example, the story begins after the war between the combined forces of Greece and the forces of the walled city of Troy and their allies has been in progress for nearly ten years.

Like other primary epics, The Iliad also begins with an invocation to a god or gods. The poet, who in those days would have been reciting the epic to an audience, say, at a banquet, began by calling for a blessing--for a god or gods to attend this effort of his. They probably literally believed that the called upon god or muse came into them and, therefore, that it was not the poet who recited, but the god in the poet's body. Poet's, then, were considered very sacred, for they could call down a god and have the god in them, at least temporarily. We continue to have remnants of this belief, of course. We often think of poets or of any true artist as being different or touched by a special hand. In the case of the beginning of THE ILIAD, the poet says something like

"Sing, goddess of epic poetry, the story of the anger of Achilles."

In a primary epic the theme is usually stated at the beginning of the epic, because these poems are so long and so complex, although the basic stories would have been familiar to the audiences, the poet would begin with announcing what the recitation was to be about. The theme or central interest of The Iliad is the wrath of Achilles, which is stated at the beginning of the poem.

A primary epic usually has many epithets. These epithets are re-namings of the characters, gods, or things by stock phrases. An example is the re-naming of Agamemnon and Menelaus as "Atreus' two sons" or "the twin eagles." It is important for us to notice these epithets, first, because they add description, and second, because we get confused about who is doing what if do not recognize the epithets as well as the names.

In a primary epic, there are catalogues of things and characters; there are many lists, both long and short. Just as the Old Testament has catalogues of genealogies--you remember all those begets--just so do ancient epics keep track of the lists of history. In one book of THE ILIAD, for example, there is a list of the ships that sailed from Greece to Troy.

There are long and formal speeches by many characters. You will not have any trouble spotting these. Sometimes they happen in the heat of battle and other seemingly inappropriate times, but more often they occur at various kinds of meetings, as in an assembly of the chieftains.

In a primary epic, Gods intervene in the affairs of human beings in these stories. For example, in Book I of THE ILIAD, Achilles, getting very angry at Agamemnon, starts to pull out his dagger to kill him. Suddenly, a goddess rushes to the side of Achilles to warn him not to be so hasty.

The setting of an epic is vast. The setting of The Iliad is also vast encompassing both the Greek and Trojan islands.  

Epics use the epic simile. An epic simile is a long comparison of two things that are in different classes. They make vivid an image and describe or clarify. An example can be found in the long comparison of Paris Alexander, a Trojan prince, to a fine horse that has been manger fed a long time in a stable. When released to pasture, it races out with quick, sure strides, neck arched, knees high, mane flowing, proud it its beauty and strength, to race to drink from a clear flowing stream. So Paris ran to battle.

The heroes embody the values of their civilization. The physical strength and stamina of Achilles, for example, is made much of. The lifting of the latch of the door of his stockade requires the strength of three soldiers, but Achilles lifts it with one hand. His spear, thrown so lightly, is eighteen feet long. He is a power machine. Today, we all know, a tiny female can have more killing power than Achilles ever dreamed of. We have created compensations--weapons.

Thus, we see that as an epic The Iliad fulfills almost all the requirements of a primary epic.

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English poetry between the two World War Notes - C.U. English Honours

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English Poetry between the two World War 

Introduction:
The years between the two world wars (1919-1939) witnessed prolific poetic activity. It was a period when tradition and innovation went side by side. In the direction of innovation we can find such groups as the Imagists, Symbolists, and Surrealists working, whereas we also find some traditionalists fighting a last-ditch battle against the forces of change.

However, most of the poets of the age combined tradition and innovation; and even the most daring inovators did not, or could not, cut at the root of the essential continuity of English poetry. In general the changes which came upon poetry may be aptly summed up in the words of Samuel C. Chew: "Poetry became obscure, experimental, irregular, antagonistic to didacticism, indifferent to any social value, the private language of small coteries, with much dependence upon verbal subtleties and patterns of association so complex, unstable, and fleeting as sometimes to become presently incomprehensible to the writers themselves." Poetry did become considerably unpopular. Chew remarks: "It is a question whether poetry became esoteric because the public had abandoned it or whether the public abandoned it because it had become esoteric."

But in spite of all this experimentation, many old and some new poets of the period were broadly traditional in thqir craft.-When the First World. War ended in 19:18, Hardy, Bridges, and Yeats were yet active. According to Grierson and~Srmth", the most important poetic works of the first decade of the period under review are Hardy's Late Lyrics, Yeafs Tower, Bridges' Testament of Beauty, and Laurence  Binyon's "greatest poems" The Sirens and The Idols. Strangely enough, these critics do not mention Eliot's The Waste Land which appeared fn 1922 and which was as potent an influence on the current of English poetry as had been, say, Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads.

Anyway, let us first consider these works before proceeding further.

Hardy, Bridges, Binyon, and Yeats:
A year or two of elation followed the termination of hostilities in 1918, before the period of depression arrived. But Hardy remained as depressed as ever-come war, come peace. All his poems are full of the spirit of atheistic pessimism, though there are passages lit by his childlike interest in the elemental simplicities of nature.
Robert Bridges (1844-1930) was the Poet Laureate. His Testament of Beauty came in 1929 when he was eighty-five. But even at this ripe age he displays a wonderful alacrity of perception which enlivens his mature philosophical speculation. "It," says Legouis, "is a philosophical poem of remarkable vitality and energy, and is interspersed with beautiful passages of natural description and human wisdom." Bridges employs a hitherto untried poetic measure which he calls "loose Alexandrines."

Laurence Binyon (1869-1943) who succeeded T. S. Eliot in the Norton Professorship of Poetry at Harvard (1933-34), published his two above-mentioned poems as also Collected Poems in the first decade of the interregnum under review. Binyon called each of these two poems "an age," though they are altogether alien to any English age. What are they, then? "They," observe Grierson and Smith, "are symphonies in verse, each developing a theme in successive movements in different measures." The Sirens was suggested by the first transatlantic flight. The theme is man's power over nature, which goes on increasing day by day. Man is really great,
And where light is, he enters unafraid.

The Idols is directed against the terrors and superstitions which are man's own creation and which hold him captive. Binyon makes a plea for the demolition of these false gods.

Yeats started his writing career as a poet in the nineteenth century. The period between the two wars brings us to consider his later poetry as we find it in his Tower. His later poetry is very different from his early poetry. Grierson and Smith point out the difference in these words: "The difference between Yeats's early and later poetry reminds one of the early and later poetry of Donne, but he has changed in the opposite direction, from the ideal to the real, the.spiritual to the sensuous. Some of his later poems are almost definitely bawdy." In 'the later part of his career Yeats came under the modernistic, Imagist influence of Ezra Pound. Consequently, his later poems are full of concrete but delicate images and particulars redolent of ancient myths. But the appearance of, what Samuel C. Chew calls, "a most unexpected sensuality" in his poetry is quite baffling indeed. Another feature of his later poetry is its recurring expression of passionate regret at the passing of youth. This regret conditions much of the symbolism employed by him. Chew observes: "The gyre, the spiral, and the winding stair are constantly recurring symbols of the cyclic philosophy which he had evolved from reading and from life."

The Georgians:
Before we consider some important modernistic movements which came between the wars, let us dispose of some important "Georgians" who were writing before the First World War and who continued writing between the Wars too. The most important of these poets are Walter de la Mare, Masefield, and Gibson.

De la Mare was a poet of childhood and the supernatural, before the first World War. However, after the War, at least for once, he became a realist of the grimmest kind. Inhis"77ze VeiF (1921) he focused his attention, to quote Grierson and Smith, "on the dreadful figures of the criminal in the dock, the drug addict,the suicide. However, his "indulgence" in realism did not continue long, for in The Fleeting (1926) he returned to the hocus-pocus of supernatural and dream poetry for which he always had a strong predilection. In some poems his religious feelings also find a good expression. He was a congenital, incorrigible dreamer and the last of his Collected Poems is, in fact, an argument for a life of dreams:
And conscience less my mind indicts
For idle days than dreamless nights.
But not to speak of nights, even his days were seldom without dreams.

About Masefield's poetry between the Wars, Grierson and Smith maintain: "Mr. Masefield celebrated the return of peace to England with a long poem on fox-hunting, the typical sport of the England he loves. Reynard the Fox is modelled on Chaucer's Prologue; the meet gives Mr. Masefield the same opportunity to bring English people of different ranks together as the Canterbury pilgrimage gave Chaucer. Mr. Masefield has not Chaucer's witty touch, nor his.universality: his characters are more Trollopian than Chaucerian, recognisable contemporary English types, not the lineaments of universal human life. But as contemporary types they are very well done and as a whole Reynard the Fox is the best sustained and evenest in execution of all Mr. Masefield's long poems. In Right Royal he applied similar methods, not quite so successfully, to the other typical English sport of horse-racing. The verse he has written since then has not added much to his fame as a poet." One drawback of Reynard the Fox may be pointed out here: it is that the weight of the Prologue is not well borne out by the story which follows, unlike what we have in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Wilfred Wilson Gibson, one of the leaders of the Georgian School of poets who opposed post-Tennysonian prettiness, continued writing poems and plays beyond the First World War. His poems on the War are instinct with bitterness, stark realism, and a controlled but devastating irony. He was, from first to last, a poet of the "people"-peasants and workers who were victims of social and economic inequalities. In his unflinching realism and unadorned style he often reminds one of Crabbe; but whereas Crabbe was diffuse and detailed, Gibson often secures his effects through telling condensation. Gibson did not mind using in his poetry some elements of the dialect of Northumberland to which he belonged. To the technique of poetry his contribution is minimal.
Let us now cast a hurried glance on the rest of the poets who were not appreciably influenced by the modernistic movements. Ronald Macfie in his long ode War expressed the point of view of the pacifist when he described the impact of the War on civilian life. The poem ends on a strong note of optimism where Macfie envisions an age of love:
The love that sighs in every wind
And breathes in every flower.
John Freeman, by profession a businessman, wrote good poems on the themes of nature and childhood. Edmund Blunden, an editor of Clare, shows the same painstaking fidelity to his paintings of nature as Clare does. He, quip Grierson and Smith, is "so solid that some readers find him stodgy.”

The Imagists:

The Imagist Movement in English poetry was a product of the War years, but it did considerably influence the poetry between the two Wars. Hulme, Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle, Aldington, and F. S. Flint were the protagonists of this movement. The Imagists in Some Imagist Poets (1915) enunciated some clear principles which John M. Manly and Edith Rickert sum up as follows in Contemporary British Literature:-
1.         to use the language of common speech butto employ the exact word;
2.         to create new rhythms for-the expression of new moods;
3.         to allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject;      
4.         to present an image, not vague generalities;
5.                    to produce poetry that is hard and clear;
6.                    to aim at concentration, since concentration is the
very essence and poetry."
Apart from the poets mentioned above D. H. Lawrence also came under the influence of the Imagist Movement, though this influence was not to continue for long. As the critics just quoted above observe: "though Lawrence never succumbed to technical conservatism, he was too mystical, too passionately and destructively critical a nature to content himself with the limitations of an essentially sensational medium, and his later work, rough and fragmentary as much of it is, is a more direct expression of his prophetic denunciations and visions than his purely imagist work."

T. S. Eliot and the Innovators:

T. S. Eliot, the greatest of the modern poets, started his career as a poet during the course of the War with his Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) but his greater and more characteristic works come later-r/ie Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930), and the rest. Eliot was the founder of the modernistic school of poetry which even today is quite flourishing. He himself as a poet came under the influence of numerous schools and writers. The Imagist Movement, the views of Hulme, the Symbolist Movement of France, the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins which was first published in 1918 many years after his death, Freud's ideas, and the poetry of Donne may be mentioned among them: Donne's "unified sensibility" was with Eliot something worthy of the most assiduous imitation. In his attempts Eliot produces even more jolts than his master. His poetry is very heavy readings as it is thick with recondite allusions and quick transitions from mood to mood which simply baffle even a; sound and painstaking Hreader. Ambivalence and paradox are the rule rather than the exception.

Most critics of today consider The Waste Land to be the greatest poem of the twentieth century. It is an image of the modern restlessness, anxiety, and despair. Though at the end the thunder promises the arrival of the life-giving rain, no rain falls. The framework'of the poem is provided by the legend of the Holy Grail. Fertility will not come to the earth till the Holy Vessel has been found. The treatment of this simple theme is the most abstruse, so much so that Eliot had to take upon himself the work of annotating his own poem.

The Hollow Men sketches the spiritual emptiness and purposelessness of modern men.
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw, alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together,
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rat's feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar        
In Ash Wednesday, however, we meet with a note of spiritual assurance which is essentially inimical to despair.

Miss Edith Sitwell and her brothers, Osbert and Sachverell Sitwell, made some robust experiments. Edith used bold and artistic imagery, and her peculiarity was her constant utilisation of the effects of synaesthesia-that is, interchanging senses. Osbert struck an astringently satirical note and enjoyed taking pot-shots at dowdiness and tawdiness. Sacheverell was very learned but was quite satisfied indulging in the baroque.

Some poets like Herbert Reade and Robert Graves came under the influence of the psychoanalytic studies of Freud, Jung, and Adler. Graves, for some time, saw nothing but sexual symbols in everything. Reade wrote "surrealistic" poetry which is expressive of the unconscious and has to be read most carefully to get at something. These experiments, as is known, paved the way for the stream-of-consciousness novel.

The Irish Poets:

Between the Wars there was a tremendous resurgence of literary activity in Ireland. The chief moving 'force was Yeats himself. The oaier notable Irish poets of the period were G. W. Russell ("AE") and J. M. Synge. Russell, according to Grierson and Smith, "was a much less versatile and melodious poet than Yeats, but a purer mystic, never; astray by that will-o'-the-wisp, that hpcus-ppcus of evocation and incantation which had such an attraction for Yeats. "Synge was chiefly  matist whose very few poems have the same qualities as his plays.

The Young Poets of Eliot Tradition:
The most important poets of the second decade of the period between the Wars are Cecil Day Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Stephen Spender. All of them are followers of Eliot, and they have tried to establish a neo-metaphysical tradition. But there is a difference-their interest in social reform and their communistic leaning. Auden is learned but his technique is unpredictable. "He," observe Moody and Lovett, "ranges freely from the most cryptic and condensed utterance to a patody of music hall rhythms, folk-ballads, and nursery rhymes." He is indeed a clever poet. Cecil Day Lewis is the most manifest of revolutionaries. Spender is a poet less of revolution than of compassion. His communism is conditioned by his strong liberal convictions. His heart bleeds when he finds the jobless poor loitering in the streets and turning.
Their empty pockets out,
he cynical gesture of the poor.

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Summary Study Material for Mayor of Casterbridge : C.U. English Honours

We has collected both of these notes from various sources on the internet. It will help you in writing about the Mayor of Casterbridge short notes for the examinations.

Tips for writing short notes.
1. Make sure your short note doesn't exceed 275 or at the maximum 300 words.
2. You should first talk about the writer and year of publication followed by a little synopsis of the work.
3. Do not ever write the whole story of the book.
4. Write the basic plot of the story, its significance and wrap your answer.

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The Mayor of Casterbridge Study Guide

In June of 1883, Thomas Hardy and his wife Emma settled into their new home in Dorchester. The Hardys had spent the last few years traveling about England, although they wanted to settle down and perhaps begin a family. Finally, Hardy and Emma decided to return to Dorchester. This town, located only a few miles from his birthplace of Upper Bockhampton, was long important to Hardy--he attended school there in his youth, and later he was apprenticed as a young architect there.

Now Hardy had returned home, and he was there to stay, as he proved through his attempts to become part of the town. He quickly built his home, Max Gate, in town. He also became interested in the issues important to the townspeople, such as the status of the laborers. He eagerly read historical records from the area, savoring the "really valuable and curious" Records of the Town of Weymouth. Despite his efforts to return to the community, however, Hardy's first love was his writing. Although he had written various short stories, he had not written a new novel in three years. Hardy had long wanted to write a novel that combined his love of history with his love of Dorsetshire. In addition, he wanted to capitalize on the success of the Wessex setting from his earlier novels. His desire to immerse himself in the history of the region led him to examine the files of the Dorsetshire County Chronicle in the spring of 1884. In these files, he found an article describing the sale of a wife by an auction. The article about the wife-sale provided him with a spectacular situation for his characters.

After spending several weeks immersed in research, Hardy began to write the novel that would become The Mayor of Casterbridge in the summer of 1884. He wrote it in bursts, constantly writing and putting it aside until he finally completed the novel on April 17, 1885. The literary magazine Graphic agreed to publish the novel serially, although with misgivings. The publishers wanted to see everything before it was published, since Hardy was known for his ability to offend everyone, even atheists. Hardy felt so constrained by the Graphic's demands that he alluded to their heavy-handed treatment in the courtroom scene: Stubberd substitutes all the curse words with letters, to the annoyance of the court. Nevertheless, Hardy's novel eventually began its serialization on January 2, 1886. On May 10 of the same year, The Mayor of Casterbridge was published in two volumes. Although the critics loved Hardy's realism and poetic style, most agreed that the novel was too improbable and too shocking--opinions that would only increase as Hardy continued to write novels.

The Mayor of Castrbridge is set in the county of Wessex, a land that has relied on the beliefs of the farming folk for centuries. Because the farmers are more connected to the land, they follow a more primal religion, based on the changing of the seasons and the forces of Nature. One of the forces of nature is cruel Fate, that "sinister intelligence bent upon punishing" which stops at nothing to keep things from being "as you wish it." This fate usually works through two channels: chance and irony. Chance often brings chraracters: Farfrae and Lucetta are brought to Casterbridge quite unexpectedly, but their arrivals ruin the lives of the Henchards. Irony works upon the people who are already there, making the best laid plans go awry. Just as Michael convinces Elizabeth-Jane that she is his daughter, he finds the note from Susan that tells the truth. Nature also serves to assist Fate--the harvest weather is bad until Michael buys all the ruined grain at high prices and cannot sell it back. With the actions of a primal and unchanging world working against the weak human, life becomes a series of pains, punctuated only by flashes of happiness.

Yet it is not completely the whims of fate that bring the characters to their downfall. When The Mayor of Casterbridge was first published in serial form, Hardy wrote, "It is not improbabilities of incident but improbabilities of character that matter." This is the basic theme of the novel, which has the additional title, "The Story of a Man of Character." Fate may create the situations for the characters, but in the end their personalities determine how they will react. Michael gains a true confidant in Farfrae, but his quick temper and mercurial ways only serve to push the young man away. Michael's pride keeps him from confessing whatever secret he has at the time. Lucetta's reckless nature causes her to do dangerous things for love. The gossiping nature of the townspeople is responsible for the skimmity ride that kills Lucetta, and the gossip that ruins Michael's career. Even Elizabeth-Jane's prudishness pushes Michael away for the first and last time. Character is just as responsible for the foibles of mankind as Fate is.

The Mayor of Casterbridge is a tragedy, in the tradition of the Greek tragedies and the plays Othello and King Lear. However, the novel still ends with a hope for humanity. The belief that fate is to blame is a tool of the past, of the superstitious farmers such as the townspeople. When Michael believes that fate is destroying him, his problems continue. Only when Michael looks into the future by casting off old beliefs is he able to change. When he sacrifices duty for love of Elizabeth-Jane, he becomes more aware of his feelings as an individual. That is humaity's only way to escape the pain of life: by relying on present instead of past, character instead of fate, the individual instead of the multitude.

Book Summary

In a fit of drunken irritation, Michael Henchard, a young, unemployed hay-trusser, sells his wife Susan and his infant daughter Elizabeth-Jane to a sailor during a fair in the village of Weydon-Priors. Eighteen years later, Susan and Elizabeth-Jane return to seek him out but are told by the "furmity woman," the old hag whose concoction had made Henchard drunk at the fair, that he has moved to the distant town of Casterbridge. The sailor has been reported lost at sea.

Susan and Elizabeth-Jane, the latter innocent of the shameful sale eighteen years before, reach Casterbridge, where they discover that Henchard has become the mayor and one of the wealthiest businessmen in the area. Henchard, out of a sense of guilt, courts Susan in a respectable manner and soon after remarries her, hoping that one day be will be able to acknowledge Elizabeth-Jane as his daughter. Concurrently with Susan's return, Henchard hires Donald Farfrae, a young Scotsman, as his business manager. After a short while, Susan dies, and Henchard learns that his own daughter had died many years earlier and that Elizabeth-Jane is really the illegitimate daughter of Newson, the sailor, Susan's second "husband."

Lucetta Templeman, a young woman from Jersey with whom Henchard has had a romantic involvement, comes to Casterbridge with the intention of marrying Henchard. She meets Farfrae, however, and the two are deeply attracted to each other. Henchard, disturbed by Farfrae's prestige in the town, has dismissed him, and Farfrae sets up his own rival business. Shortly after, Farfrae and Lucetta are married.

Henchard's fortunes continue their decline while Farfrae's advance. When Henchard's successor as mayor dies suddenly, Farfrae becomes mayor. Henchard's ruin is almost completed when the "furmity woman" is arrested as a vagrant in Casterbridge and reveals the transaction two decades earlier when Henchard sold his wife. Then, by a combination of bad luck and mismanagement, Henchard goes bankrupt and is forced to make his living as an employee of Farfrae's.

Lucetta, now at the height of her fortunes, has staked everything on keeping her past relationship with Henchard a secret. Her old love letters to him, however, find their way into the hands of Henchard's vengeful ex-employee, Jopp, who reveals them to the worst element in the town. They organize a "skimmity-ride," in which Henchard and Lucetta are paraded in effigy through the streets. The shock of the scandal kills Lucetta.

Now an almost broken man, Henchard moves to the poorest quarters, where his life is made tolerable only by Elizabeth-Jane's kindness and concern. Even his comfort in her affection is threatened, however, when Newson, the sailor, returns in search of his daughter. Henchard's lie to Newson that Elizabeth-Jane has died is eventually discovered, and Elizabeth-Jane, his last source of comfort, turns against him.

Farfrae, after a period as a widower, renews his interest in Elizabeth-Jane. They are married and Henchard, when he comes to deliver a wedding gift, finds Newson enjoying his position as the bride's father. Heartbroken, Henchard leaves and shortly afterwards dies in an abandoned hut, attended only by the humblest and simplest of his former workmen. The novel closes when Farfrae and Elizabeth-Jane find the place where he has died and read his terrible will of complete renunciation.

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Summary of 'Ode To A Skylark' in simple words: C.U. English Honours Notes

Most of the students find reading and understanding the poems quite difficult and frustrating. The key to understanding the poem is to understand its 'theme' and 'summary'. If you know these two basic things then you will be able to write any answer on any given poem. Here is a smart summary of the poem Ode To A Skylark which carefully breaks the whole poem in simple language and gives a clear view of the theme without sounding much difficult.

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According to Near Eastern mythology, the lark was the first creature to live upon the earth. Even today, he carries his father or creator inside the crest of his head. In other regions, the lark became associated with the "Spirit of the Wheat" and eventually with Christ who proclaimed, "I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever" (John 6:51; see also John 6:32-50). This bird's use as a symbol of Christ was strengthened by the fact that it helps rid wheat fields of locust eggs, caterpillars, and the harvest beetle - destructive creatures which were symbols of the devil. Because he makes his nest on the ground, the lark, like Christ is considered an intermediary between heaven and earth and a symbol of the marriage of heaven and earth. 

Because the lark soars straight into the heavens and, upon reaching a great height, hovers there singing a joyful song, this bird is considered an emblem of glad prayers to the Creator inspired by the joys of being alive. He is believed to pray for the sowers of the wheat fields and, allegorically, for the sowers of Christ's fields. Its association with prayer makes this bird a symbol of the priesthood. In Scotland, it is said that the song of the lark may be understood by any person who lies quietly in the fields and listens to it. A British superstition states that drinking three lark's eggs will give one a beautiful singing voice. The singing lark is especially a symbol of the praying Christ as He ascends into Heaven, blessing His disciples (Luke 24:50-51; see also Acts 1:9; Mk 16:19).
This bird also symbolizes freedom, ardor, joy, youth, happiness, and the desire to be happy. Among the French, lark's legs are carried as good luck charms in the same way as rabbit's feet are treasured by the superstitious.

Remarkable in many ways, a great in his own time, Percy Bysshe Shelley was a man amongst men, a poet among poets, and an educator of life amongst all. His great poetry tells stories of life's lessons that you would never ever think about. He's educated people of many ages with his great poetry, telling them about his life, the good, the bad, and the simple. His works will be treated as a great reference for many years as great poets emerge from our peers. In my eyes and many more, Percy Bysshe Shelley will always be a Great.

Born in the year of was initially a fan of Wordsworth's poetry. He believed that Wordsworth's early poetry implicitly challenged the status quo because it self-consciously set out to transform the definition of poetry. Wordsworth's early poetry distinguishes itself from eighteenth-century verse with its focus on humble subjects and its use of "everyday" language, even as it also employs the formal devices traditional found in English verse, like personification, regular meter, and rhyme schemes. Shelley read Wordsworth's poetic innovations as political statements that implicitly called for a more egalitarian society that would reflect the ambitions of the first French Revolutionaries, whose rallying cry was "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." Shelley believed, in short, that art could change the world by offering to the reader's imagination what the "real" world denies: possibilities for rethinking and hence remaking the social hierarchy. Later Shelley came to believe that Wordsworth never lived up to his original promise as a poet because his later work "betrayed" the radical ideas of his early poetry: Shelley believed that Wordsworth, because his work tended to celebrate the enduring elements of Britain society -- like its countryside -- had abandoned the radical cause in England. His reading of Wordsworth's career is substantially correct: Wordsworth became progressively more conservative over the course of his lifetime. In 1816, Shelley published a sonnet lamenting Wordsworth's betrayal of "truth and liberty" . Shelley's poetry shares with Wordsworth and Coleridge a powerful interest in the human imagination. For Shelley, in the imagination lay the only hope for a more free and egalitarian society. Exercising the imagination could enable the reader to see new possibilities in the world around him or her; it could also make possible empathy and sympathy for all other human beings. Reading and writing poetry, thus, is the only means by which people can imagine and make possible a better world. Shelley's philosophy can loosely be summarized as "change the heart and you change the world." Shelley believed that the engagement of the imagination made possible the two conditions necessary for the individual to work for political change: first, empathy for those less fortunate; and second, the capacity to imagine a world of political equality.

The poem I chose for to analyze was "To a Skylark." I will try my best to tell you about this poem. It was written in 1820, originally published with "Prometheus Unbound" the same year. His wife, Mary Shelley writes " It was on a beautiful summer evening, while wandering among the lanes whose myrtle hedges were the bowers of the fire-flies, that we heard the carolling of the skylark which inspired one of the most beautiful of his poems." This poem has a rhyme scheme of: ababb. It was written in the romantic period.


It has been said to be a great work of literature. The best poetry is what Shelley terms "unpremeditated art". This is almost in line with the Zen philosophy of effortless achievement. This, perhaps the loveliest of Shelley's poems, is a tribute of art born of pure understanding. But there is also an acknowledgement that the emotions of humans, hate, pride, fear, sorrow, are essential ingredients of the human experience, however flawed that might be. It is said that these lines:
"Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know;
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now."
are some of the greatest lines in English poetry to this very day. A tribute to his muse, something like ‘Kubla Khan’ or Wordsworth's ‘Highland Lass’, inspiring them to heights of poetry.

Percy Bysshe Shelley completed the poem entitled "To a Skylark" in late June 1820. It was written near Livorno, Italy. It was inspired by an evening walk in the country with Mary Shelley, and describes the appearance and song of a skylark they come upon. Mary Shelley observed "we heard the carolling of the skylark, which inspired one of his most beautiful poems." The poem uses a unique five line stanza with a 3 beat line except for the fifth line, which doubles the number beats of the other lines, and it has a rhyme scheme that is consistently 'abab.' However, the fifth line does not follow the rhyme scheme of the first four lines but varies the line that it rhymes with.
Shelley is using the skylark both rhetorically and metaphorically. The Skylark transcends the ordinary; it is a nexus of idealism and Shelley's own radical thought. Its message has the power to raise the political consciousness and promote the change that the poet desires. The poet knows that freedom is not only physical and asks the skylark to tell him its "sweet thoughts," for never has he heard anything with "a flood of rapture so divine." He also knows that with only 'half the gladness that thy brain must know' the seed of life itself could awake from its dormant state of inactivity; rejecting human suffering and promoting the outer beauty of collective harmony. Shelley's skylark is a 'sphere' of joy, undulating hope and an overflowing propensity to instill belief. The skylark touches the essence of existence, it knows that "life" and all its "pleasure" and "beauty" is achievable. The poet also emphatically reminds us, however, that "The world should listen then, as I am listening now."

Whatever emotions "To A Skylark' invokes, Shelley was, as he himself believed, a philosopher first and a poet second. Shelley tried in his way to be free. Free from the complacency of his contemporaries and free to express his observations through his poetical message. The bellowing tones of the 'skylark' echo this message resonantly almost two hundred years from the date it was written. It is a testimony to those of us who, through creative expression, try to carve our own niche of freedom. It is ironic then that in a world with a more open forum for political expression the 'dead poets’ society' of past generations is fast becoming one of the last vestiges of radical thought. Or maybe Shelley was just a 'happy genius who tried to live a sad life' and consoled himself in the beauty of nature as an end itself. The babbling brooks, the rustling trees, the smiling flowers thus devoid of radical significance. Innate objects flourishing in their natural habitat and fueling his poetic expression. Imagination is the soul itself! In the final stanza, Shelley concerns himself with wanting to be a skylark. He longs to be released from the chains of monotony in his life. This desire is the 'hidden meaning' of Shelley's poem.

The skylark is his greatest natural metaphor for pure poetic expression, the "harmonious madness" of pure inspiration. The skylark's song issues from a state of purified existence, a Wordsworthian notion of complete unity with Heaven through nature; its song is motivated by the joy of that uncomplicated purity of being, and is unmixed with any hint of melancholy or of the bittersweet, as human joy so often is. The skylark's unimpeded song rains down upon the world, surpassing every other beauty, inspiring metaphor and making the speaker believe that the bird is not a mortal bird at all, but a "Spirit." In that sense, the skylark is almost an exact twin of the bird in Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale"; both represent pure expression through their songs, and like the skylark, the nightingale "wast not born for death." But while the nightingale is a bird of darkness, invisible in the shadowy forest glades, the skylark is a bird of daylight, invisible in the deep bright blue of the sky. The nightingale inspires Keats to feel "a drowsy numbness" of happiness that is also like pain, and that makes him think of death; the skylark inspires Shelley to feel a frantic, rapturous joy that has no part of pain. To Keats, human joy and sadness are inextricably linked, as he explains at length in the final stanza of the "Ode on Melancholy." But the skylark sings free of all human error and complexity, and while listening to his song, the poet feels free of those things, too.

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